1. Field
This disclosure relates generally to portable devices coupled to an electronic device, more specifically, to a portable device with an integrated driver, which may install the driver automatically once the device is coupled to a host electronic device.
2. Description
There are a number of connection technologies which help connect portable devices to a host electronic device. Portable devices include computer peripheral devices such as cameras, mice, keyboards, printers, flash drives, external hard drives, media players, network adaptors, etc. The host electronic device may include a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a tablet, a netbook computer, a smart phone, and so on. A host device may also be coupled to another host electronic device as a peripheral device. Connection technologies include but not limited to the Universal Serial Bus (USB), IEEE 1934 interface, and eSATA.
The USB is an industrial standard for a serial bus interface to establish communications between devices and a host such as a personal computer (PC). The USB supports functional data and control exchange between the USB host and a USB device as a set of either uni-directional or bi-directional pipes. USB data transfers take place between host software and a particular endpoint on a USB device. The USB host interacts with USB devices through a USB Host Controller (HC). The USB system software on the host manages interactions between USB devices and host-based device software. The USB standard supports plug and play and hot swapping.
The IEEE 1934 interface is a serial bus interface standard for high-bandwidth communications and isochronous real-time data transfer. It may be used by PCs, digital audio/video applications. This interface may also be referred to as FireWire, i.LINK, or Lynx. The IEEE 1934 may connect a number of peripherals (e.g., 63) in a tree chain topology. It may be used to replace parallel Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) connection in many applications. It allows peer-to-peer device communication such as communications between a scanner and a printer to take place without using system memory or the Central Processing Unit (CPU). It is designed to support plug and play and hot swapping.
The eSATA, which stands for external Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA), is a variation of the SATA interface standard. The SATA interface is a bus interface for connecting host bus adapters to mass storage devices such as hard disk drives and optical drives. The eSATA is designed for external connectivity, for example, connecting a PC to an external hard disk drive.
Whichever connection technology is used, it is normally necessary to install a device driver of a portable device in the host in order for a user to use the portable device to interact with the host. For example, a digital camera with a USB port normally comes with an installation Compact Disc (CD) which includes a driver for the digital camera. In order to transfer a digital picture between a PC and the digital camera through the USB connection, the driver needs to be first installed in the PC. Similarly it needs to install a driver in a PC to transfer video data between a camcorder with an IEEE 1934 port and the PC via the IEEE 1934.
Typically each portable device has its own driver which normally cannot be shared with another device, even if the other device is of the same type but manufactured by a different manufacturer. Thus, a user needs to save the installation CD for a portable device for later use. For example, if a PC is crashed and needs to be rebuilt at a later time, the user needs to find the CD to install the driver for the portable device again. At that time, the user might not be able to find the installation CD any more. Therefore, it is not very convenient to have a driver CD for a portable device.